Trust
by Gatirtoh
Summary: RAVEN POV. Robin thinks Slade is in South Africa and wants to investigate. Raven joins him for the trip. When they get there, they find the disturbance is not Slade but something much worse...how do they stop it? *RobRae later*
1. Prologue

Robin sighed and put down his fork. "Guys, I have something to say."

I closed my book and looked at him. The rest of the team stopped what they were doing to listen as well.

"There's apparently something really strange going on in South Africa. I want to go check it out. I think it could be Slade," he said quietly.

After standing in silence for a moment, Beastboy spoke up. "Dude, how do you know what's going on in South Africa? And how do you know it's Slade?"

Robin shrugged. "I have sources. And it's a guess. But there have been signs."

I stood up. "Like what – oh, whatever. Robin, this is my point. Our job is to protect Jump City, not go chasing after Slade when he's someplace halfway across the world."

"Tokyo," Robin reminded me.

I sighed. "Tokyo was different. We were asked to go there. This is just you being paranoid about Slade."

"Yeah, dude, you don't even know it's him," Cyborg pointed out.

"I think perhaps you need to punch the straw earlier than usual today, Robin," Starfire said firmly. "You seem tired."

"Star," I whispered to her.

"What?" she whispered back.

"It's 'hit the hay'," I told her.

"Oh." She smiled, embarrassed, and her face turned pink.

"Anyway, Robin," I said, turning my attention back to the team leader, "going to South Africa to find Slade is out of the question. There is a very small chance it's actually him, but the people of Jump City need us."

Robin slammed his fist down on the table, making the empty dishes clatter. "This is not just me being paranoid! There is something going on!"

"Well, we can't all afford to go," I stated.

"That's why I said _I _want to go check it out!" he almost shouted.

I shook my head slowly. "You can't go by yourself. No offense, Robin, but you can't handle Slade by yourself." I took a deep breath. "I'll go with you." It was the best choice. Robin being chiefly an offense fighter, my defensive abilities would help him greatly. Plus, we trusted each other. We were best friends, and had a mental bond.

Robin opened his mouth, and closed it again. He was silent for a moment.

"Fine. Pack your stuff, we're leaving tomorrow."

I lifted an eyebrow in response, and drifted off to my room, not waiting to hear the response from Starfire, Beastboy, and Cyborg, which I knew would not be good – they would all want to go too. They had just been standing quietly when I suggested accompanying Robin.

When I got to my room, I took a good look around – I probably wouldn't be seeing it again for a while, and my room was my favorite place in the world. With a sigh I began to gather essentials – I wanted to travel light, in case the trouble actually was Slade. If I got caught carrying a giant backpack…well, let's just say I wouldn't want to get caught carrying a giant backpack. Even if I could use it as a weapon.


	2. Teleporting Makes Me Tired

"All right," said Robin quietly. He and I were sitting at the table together. Both of us were packed, and we were working out the simple detail of how we were actually going to _get _to Africa. Neither of us wanted to take 12 hours or longer to get there, so we'd ruled out air travel. We were going over the option of having me teleport us both there.

"I can't just teleport us over to Africa," I told Robin flatly. "It doesn't work that way. Long distance teleporting is really hard to do, and it saps your strength in the extreme." Robin thought for a moment.

"Well then, can we have an indirect teleport? You can teleport us somewhere, and then teleport again. Just use short distance a lot," he suggested. I considered this.

"That might work…but I can't promise it won't have the same effect on me as using long distance. In other words, I probably won't be in any condition to go find Slade once we get there."

Robin nodded. "That's fine. We can spare a day for your recovery." I raised an eyebrow.

"Out of curiosity, what _couldn't_ we spare a day for?"

Robin grinned. "A trip to an amusement park?"

I rolled my eyes. "And I'm sure there are just _plenty_ of those in South Africa."

Robin patted me on the shoulder. "Thanks, Raven. It'll be nice to have you along. Good night."

"Night."

After Robin left, I sat there for a long time. I wasn't sure why, but I just didn't feel like going to sleep.

Of course, I sure felt like it the next morning.

"Ugh," I sighed as I gathered my stuff. Robin smiled.

"How much sleep did you get last night?"

I looked at him. "Zero."

His smile slowly vanished. "Will you still be able to use the teleporting?"

I nodded wearily.

"Oh, good. Are you ready to go?"

I nodded wearily.

"Remember where you're supposed to go first?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, let's go."

I concentrated, and a bubble of black energy surrounded Robin and me. We slowly sank into the ground, and rose out of it somewhere else.

I'm not going into the details of where we stopped during the course of the teleporting, but let's just say that some of the places we ended up were not very pleasant. Curious? Okay, I'll give you an example: inside a cell in an _insane asylum_. It was not pretty. Remember that it's kind of hard to calculate where you're going to end up teleporting unless you know the exact location, down to the color and size of the tile your feet will be on. Just knowing the general area was not always the best plan.

Finally, we were there. I was exhausted. Robin looked at me. "Do you still need the recovery day?"

I looked at him like he had two heads. "Do you really need to ask that?"

He grinned. "Right. Okay. One day."

One day alone with Robin…I wasn't sure if that was going to be a good thing or a bad thing.

Or a _great_ thing.


	3. I Spend an Uneventful Day With Robin

I sat down heavily on a rock, breathing hard. Robin was gathering long pieces of wood. I raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure a fire is a good idea?" I asked. "Slade could see the smoke. Or the flames, if he's close enough." He looked at me.

"I know that. These aren't for fire. I'm making something."

"What?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Then why are you just going around grabbing wood when you could be doing something productive?"

He snorted. "Like what? It's not like I'm going to build a shelter or anything. We're only going to be here a day."

I sighed, got up off the rock, and sat on the ground instead. "I don't know…start making some food or something."

"Raven, our bags are full of meat and tofu. And some Tamaranean goo that Starfire made. All we have to do is eat it before it goes bad."

"I'm not even sure Tamaranean food _can_ spoil."

Robin laughed. "I'm not either." He began sorting through all the sticks he'd collected.

"Decided what you're going to do with those yet?"

"Yeah. I'm going to make a staff."

"Why?"

"It's for you. I figure it'll be easier for you to focus your power if you have something like this."

"And how would you know?"

He looked at me, smiled, and tapped his heart, reminding me of our mental bond.

"Oh. Right. But it'll be kind of annoying to have to carry that around all the time."

"I'm sure you'll manage. You wouldn't want to turn away a gift, would you?"

"Depends on the gift. Remember the time Beastboy gave me a gift card to a video game store?"

He laughed. "How could I forget BB's face after you blew it to pieces?"

I began to laugh as well. It was hard not to laugh when Robin was laughing.

"But isn't this a little cliché?" I almost whined. I knew I was grasping at straws, but I didn't like receiving anything from anyone. Gifts meant debts, debts meant favors, and that meant the whole thing getting out of hand.

Robin stared at me. I stared back for a while, and Robin sighed. "Come on, Raven. You don't owe me on this one. A friend to a friend." My eyebrows drew down slightly, but I turned my face away so he couldn't see.

"Fine." I remained silent for several minutes, then finally asked, "So why do you think Slade is here again?"

Robin didn't answer. I was about to reach into his mind to find out when he blurted, "This is the only place I haven't looked."

My eyebrows shot up. "Slade can move around, you know. He's not an ancient relic buried in the ground, waiting around for you to find him. As soon as he knows you're onto him, he'll bolt and you'll have to start all over again. You'll have to be more strategic than that, Robin. And…I thought you _were_."

He sat down too, and rested his head in his hands. "I…I was. I had all these brilliant plans to track him down, once I got the right lead. But I never did, and it got so frustrating…I just resorted to checking everywhere. I'll keep going even if it takes forever, and it probably will. But I just can't let this go."

My lips tightened. I knew better than anyone about Robin's obsessive preoccupation with Slade. It scared me. It scared him, too. He knew it couldn't be good for him, but he couldn't stop himself. Anytime he saw anything that could be even vaguely related to a clue as to Slade's location or current activities, he was on it like a fly on roadkill. There was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

"Robin…you know…" I hesitated. Should I talk about this now? He would be angry, I was absolutely sure of it. Robin did not like discussing his flaws.

"Just leave it alone, Raven, alright!" I had been right. His voice was harsh, and he seemed to realize it even before the words left his mouth, but he did not apologize. Near the place where I was sitting, a small rock turned pitch black and exploded violently. I didn't like it when people yelled at me, because my immediate instinct was to kill them. It required very extreme amounts of self-control to stop myself, let alone maintain my usual stoic facial expression. I didn't want to kill Robin. If I did, I would regret it later.

At least, I hoped so…

~AN: Sorry it took so long to update! I'll try to be a little less lazy next time.

–Shiba-sama


	4. We Find Something Bad

I knew I was on the right track now. Robin and I had been searching for hours. I figured all that isn't really worth mentioning now because it was completely monotonous – dead end, after dead end, after dead end. But I had caught Slade's scent. I knew something sinister was here. I knew it was him.

I wasn't sure what I'd do with Robin. With all his stupid heroism, he'd probably go for the epic confrontation instead of sneak-attacking Slade, which would be the _smart_ thing to do. No, he would have to take the stupidest course of action possible, like always. So what would I do? I couldn't possess Robin. He was my friend. Of course not. Maybe I-

My mental activity stopped cold.

I'd had a feeling that Slade was behind all this, but I hadn't expected for everything to be this elaborate.

A huge, gigantic, gargantuan cave stood directly in front of us. I didn't know how I hadn't seen it before now. That was disturbing, to say the least. But even worse was what lay inside the cavern.

Thousands of tubes lined the wall. Each was perfectly clear, so we could see all the better the horrors that rested in them.

You know how some people like to say that they're their own worst enemies? What a cruel twist of fate that that clichéd line would be fulfilled, here and now, in this way.

The tubes contained _them. _Thousands of them: our friends. A million green-skinned Beastboys, a million Cyborgs with circuits flashing, a million Starfires. All with their perfectly copied eyes closed. But who had created them? When would they wake up? _How_ would they wake up?

And finally, the most important question…

_WHY?_

To my utmost humiliation, my voice contained a trace of a tremble. "What's going on?" Why the _hell_ did I ask him _that_? How would he know?

"I don't know," he whispered, his dark eyebrows snapping down over his mask. He glared at me. "Of course I don't know! How would I?"

My lips tightened. Great minds think alike, they say. "Robin. Not the time."

He sighed. "No. You're right. Let's go. We'll find out what this is." He stalked down the middle of the cavern, and I followed. Soon after a few moments inside the stone structure, I discovered that it wasn't stone at all, just a hologram. And the hologram flickered constantly, blending with the background scenery outside. Maybe that was why I hadn't seen this monstrosity before it was right in front of my face.

A selection of more darkly colored tubes caught my eye. I went over to look, and Robin paused.

The tubes were, of course, the same design as the rest – it was just a little harder to see what was inside because they were so darkly tinted. I squinted slightly.

And the glass exploded.

I flinched. Robin was already running toward me, upset. "Raven! Do you think someone might have heard that?"

Too shaken to respond, I just looked at him, indicating that I didn't know.

He looked inside the glass, and his eyes widened.

It was a child. A toddler. Asleep like all the rest, but just as awful as if it had been awake. It was hooked up to thousands of wires, coursing with electricity, giving it life. But that wasn't why it scared me so badly.

It was _me_. The wrong age, of course, but it had all my features, my expression. Right down to the costume and the chakra on my forehead.

I looked around frantically, and saw a red button hidden on the bottom of the tube. I pressed it with my foot. The wires stopped glowing, and the child-me slumped. It wasn't dead. But it…she would grow at a normal pace now, in her own environment. She would never pass for another me.

I ran around like a madwoman, stomping on the red buttons. How dare someone try to create a copy of me! I was already a menace to the world. Was this some kind of sick joke?

I heard Robin's strangled voice behind me.

"Raven!"

I looked behind me, and there was a child Robin.

"Hit the red button, Robin."

He did, and suddenly an alarm went off somewhere. I could hear footsteps coming for us.

My eyes widened. "Robin! We have to go!"

He floundered. "But- what about all the other clones-?"

I stomped my foot in frustration, and another tube shattered in an explosion of glass shards. "There's no time! And there's nothing we can do. All the red button does is stop them growing! They're already perfect copies!"

"All right-"

I didn't even wait for him to finish speaking. I just grabbed his hand and flew us out of there as fast as I could go. As soon as we were out of the cave, I teleported. We ended up in some rural African village in the middle of nowhere. But it was better than where we had been.

Some of the townspeople stared, but not for too long. We just ignored them and they continued ignoring us.

"Robin…" I choked out. "Do you have any idea what, what this means?"

He blinked.

"Any of them. At any time. They could be… killed. And replaced. And we wouldn't know."

Robin blinked again.


	5. We Consider Our Predicament

Robin shook his head. "Raven… I – I don't get it. We were in a lab, and there were people who looked like us… and then you went around stomping red buttons like it was going out of style – "

He stopped and met my eyes, finally.

"You heard me, Robin." My voice sounded hollow to my own ears. "Our friends could be replaced, and we'd never know. There's no way we _could_ know."

I sat on the ground with a thump, ignoring the confused African villagers staring at me out of the corner of their eyes.

Robin's eyes widened and his breathing stopped. He looked like he'd just been shot through the throat.

"No…" he whispered, not in denial or disbelief, but despair. It was already too late for us to do anything. Hundreds of perfect clones of three of our friends had been made, and we couldn't tell the difference.

"I don't think this is Slade," I told him, barely paying attention to the words coming out of my mouth. "It's too big for him. Too crude, almost. He wouldn't want to replace us, he'd… he'd do something else." It occurred to me after a moment or two that I was speaking more to myself than to Robin, trying to convince myself that this was someone else, some new unknown enemy. Because new enemies could be stupid, could be weak – you never knew. I didn't want it to be Slade… because Slade was infallible. He didn't make mistakes much, and when he did, they were minor ones. Mere scratchings on the surface, not even making a dent in his master plan. Whatever that was.

Robin laughed humorlessly. "No, it isn't Slade."

My head jerked around to look at him so fast that for a moment I was afraid I'd broken something. "How do you know?" I whispered, unable to keep my eyes from widening.

Robin held up something shiny. I squinted at it. "Does this look like Slade to you?" he wanted to know.

It was a symbol of some kind, or a logo – he must have gotten it from that ghastly lab. It was unfamiliar to me, and probably to him as well.

"No," I replied honestly. He looked at me with lost eyes.

"So is that good, or bad?" he inquired softly, not exactly asking me. More like asking the universe. Asking life. Something like that.

Robin did things like that a lot. It wasn't why he was such a good leader, but it _was_ one reason why he tended to be a magnet for the ladies.

"I'll tell you what it means, Robin," I said soberly. "This means from now on, we can trust each other and nobody else. Who knows how many more of those things there are? This could be huge." I shrugged, just as lost as he was.

"It's good we already have the trust part down, then," Robin breathed, and suddenly my breath wasn't there anymore.

_Seriously. Stop doing that, you jerk._


End file.
